A Vampire Movie Worth Seeing!

The other night I accompanied my son Nathan to a vampire movie entitled “Let Me In.” While I like intelligent scary movies, I don’t care much for vampire flicks, and I hate gore. But I’ll go to just about anything (short of shows involving torture) to hang out with my autistic son (who happens to LOVE horror films). So, despite the fairly positive reviews this show got, I went in with rather low expectations. To my surprise, I loved it!

On one level, “Let Me In” is a story of friendship between two twelve-year-old lost and lonely misfits, Owen (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Abby (played by Chloe Moretz). Owen is viciously bullied in school, and Abby teaches him to stand up for himself (in a very anti-Christ-like way, I must add). On a more profound level, however, “Let Me In” is a movie about the nature of evil. Abby, it turns out, is a sweet and adorable young girl, AND is also an absolutely ferocious blood-sucking vampire.

Though Abby is twelve, she confesses to Owen she’s been twelve “for a very long time” (hints make it clear that she’s thousands of years old). We learn that this perpetually young lady gets along in the world by recruiting a boy to spend his life doing her bidding (killing people to get her blood). Since her previous suitor is old and beginning to fail her, it seems that Abby views the highly vulnerable Owen as a new prospect — but you’re not sure (see below).

There’s a lot of things I liked about this movie. For starters, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz both give remarkably compelling performances. And the way the director used the camera to evoke a feeling of eeriness and alienation throughout the movie was remarkable. For example, the director captures Owen’s alienation from his oddly religious mother by never showing her face. Also, this movie contains the most cleverly shot car crash scene I think I’ve ever seen. In its own way, it brings the audience in on the bizarre, chaotic, macabre life of the driver (sorry to be opaque, but I can’t tell you more than that without giving too much away).

But the best part of this movie, in my opinion, was the way it keeps you off balance and thereby communicates something profound about the subtle, confusing nature of evil. Abby is adorable, sweet and caring, but also utterly demonic. What you can’t tell is whether Abby is really adorable, sweet and caring, or whether she’s just pretending in order to lure Owen into a trap. Consequently, you don’t know whether you should allow yourself to like this child and view her as a tragic figure who is eternally condemned to feed her demonic alter-ego, or whether you should view her adorable personality as merely a deceptive mask.

Because of this eerie ambiguity, you also never know how to interpret Abby’s words. Part of Abby’s charm, for example,  is that she’s always completely (even shockingly) honest with Owen. But you’re never sure why she’s being so honest, and the fact that her honesty has an uncanny way of flipping around and inching her closer to getting what she (or at least the demonic part of her) wants makes her suspect. You can’t ever be sure.

Should you love or despise the charm of Abby? You can’t be certain, and throughout the movie it’s hard not to feel torn, which is precisely the dilemma Owen finds himself in…and precisely what makes evil truly evil.

If you can tolerate an “R” level of gore (it is, after all, a vampire movie), you may find “Let Me In” to be an intriguing and educational experience.